Winter Walk

Sarah Hartse |

12/22/2007 - 12/23/07

First Place, teen essays

"Someone has to walk the dog" — and we're glad that it's Sara Hartse, who uses crisp prose, close observation and inventive imagery to take us along on her frigid adventure.

It is an evening in mid-December, the time when a soft glow lights up human nature and when people are at their warmest. It's the time for people to be together, safe and inside, not exposed to the harsh, icy winter. However, someone has to walk the dog.

This night the air is sharp, like a stainless-steel knife blade. It cuts the sounds into feelings like broken glass. The stars are the most prominent feature in the sky. This is because their sister, the moon, has not yet risen to steal their glory. The stars shine with a brilliant light. This is because they are on fire.

Crunch, crunch, feet break through hardened snow, snow that has endured the sun's melting rays and frozen up again. This is not the wet, goose-feather snow that comes from close gray clouds. It is the kind that seems to come from very far away, maybe from the stars. The sky tells of a thousand nights, but none quite the same as this.

The world is muffled by the snow, yet fine-tuned by the cosmos. Orion is visible. He is fleeing, ever fleeing, from Scorpio, his nemesis. Scorpio will one day drive him from the sky, the day when summer comes. Sparkling eyes turn upward and gloved fingers point at this endless pursuit. I wonder how many other stories the stars have to tell and if they will ever share them with us, the youngest.

The walk continues despite the cold hands and red noses. The dog pulls the leash forward and into the night, bringing with it the walkers. The dog startles a small, quiet rabbit that bounds off into the snow, leaving small, quiet footprints, which barely make a mark in the hardened snow.

The mountains lift their snowy heads, reaching up to meet the sky and to tuck into night, like a velvet quilt. The walkers continue along under the quilt, turning onto roads this way and that, each street revealing a small memory as they walk past it. The memories illuminate the way, like the candles in farolitos.

The girl stumbles and almost falls on a patch of ice created by someone who had no time to shovel the driveway, but did have time to drive the car over it. She looks at the windows of the person who does not shovel snow. They are bright and yellow, like the little camp fires you see when you are walking back to your tent in the cold. They are so warm, yet so distant.

Winter seems to engulf the walkers. It separates them from the others, those who are sitting by the fireside, caught up in the holiday spirit. For a time, the walkers are a part of their own world, one where their warm breath floats in icy clouds around their faces and where the stars are the brightest things in their sky. The spring will never touch this moment; it will not thaw it or let it melt away.

The walkers draw near their home. They stop for a moment and look once more at the stars, at the huge, clear sky. Then they step into the house because they are only mortal and cannot live in the winter.